Someone mentioned to me that Obama had not visited Israel. I replied that only one president had done so in their first term. I was incorrect. Two did: Carter and Clinton. Here are the facts (sorry, there is only one side to facts - you may interpret them anyway you wish). From the FactChecker by Kessler, you can also retrieve the same information from the State Dept. records but it takes numerous site visits. Politifact also has the same information.

The Facts

"The State Department historian’s office maintains a list of presidential foreign travels, so we can quickly see which presidents have visited Israel — and when. Here’s the list since Israel’s founding:

Harry Truman: no visit Dwight Eisenhower: no visit John Kennedy: no visit Lyndon Johnson: no visit Richard Nixon: sixth year of presidency Gerald Ford: no visit Jimmy Carter: third year of presidency Ronald Reagan: no visit George H.W. Bush: no visit Bill Clinton: 4 visits—in the second, third, fourth and sixth years of his presidency George W. Bush: 2 visits—in the eighth year of his presidency

According to this list, only four of the last 11 presidents visited Israel during their presidency, and two — Nixon and George W. Bush — waited until their second term to make their first trip. In both cases, they visited in the last year of their presidencies (Nixon resigned because of the Watergate affair shortly after his trip.)

Only Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, then, visited Israel in their first term. And of the last four presidents, two never visited Israel, one visited in his second term and one visited in his first term.

Thus Obama’s failure to travel to Israel thus far is not unusual at all.

The Emergency Committee ad also suggests that Obama has visited Arab countries rather than Israel. But the State Department records also demonstrate that every president who traveled to Israel had previously visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The ad also incorrectly says Obama has “traveled all over the Middle East.” Obama visited just Turkey and Iraq in April 2009, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia in June 2009. The stops in Iraq and Saudi Arabia were barely a few hours long — and Obama has not traveled at all to Middle East in the past three years. (Many of the images in the ad of Obama with Arab leaders are from international confabs held outside the Middle East.)

Indeed, George W. Bush, Clinton and George H.W. Bush were much more well traveled in the Middle East than Obama has been so far in his presidency.